1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  Older's breathing quickened, his face reddened and collar tightened as the veins strained in his neck. I was afraid his head might explode. I steadied myself. "Rolf's fawning pals do a lot less fawning and a lot more complaining after a little Mumm's. The only man boorish enough to serve champagne in his opera box. That might actually be his undoing." Older stammered several times before he managed to get the words out. "I'm so flabbergasted, Annalisa, I'm having trouble being angry. All these months. Working right here under my own nose. You know how this looks? It looks like I sent you in as a spy, like I used you as bait to entice Rolf's pals to turn against him."

  "I was only following instructions, sir. Lieutenant Fallon and Mr. Feeney demanded that I report to no one but them."

  "I should fire you on the spot."

  "I'm sure the city editor at the Examiner would be more understanding."

  "You would do that to me, Annalisa?"

  "The question is, Mr. Older, would you do that to me? Byron Fallon may be dead and God knows who has my signed affidavits. At the moment, my employment is the least of my concerns."

  He gazed toward the Ferry Building as a gaff-rigged schooner, its sails illuminated by the ghostly waterfront lights, reached toward the Washington Street Pier.

  "Another boatload of those wretched little Chinese girls," he said. "This was supposed to be the day we put an end to this God-forsaken nightmare. Maybe these lunatics are right; we ought to burn in Hell for this madness."

  His shoulders slumped; he put his hat back on his head and shuffled painfully toward his office. He stood there in the doorway, unable to move, teetering so that I feared he might collapse.

  No one knew the fear of challenging the entrenched evil in San Francisco more than Fremont Older, who inherited the Bulletin's mantle not long after its founding editor, James King of William, was gunned down by a corrupt city supervisor following a series of blistering exposés. Older had survived lawsuits, attacks on his employees, labor strikes orchestrated by Adam Rolf, physical assaults, death threats, and editorial ridicule from the Examiner's William Randolph Hearst and the Chronicle's Michael de Young to become the principal voice of the City's reform.

  The previous year, Older had devoted the majority of the Bulletin's editorials to defeating Eugene Schmitz' bid for re-election. The effort had little effect on a populace seduced by Schmitz' charm and Rolf's money. Schmitz and his entire ticket, all eighteen of Rolf’s hand-picked candidates for supervisor's seats, were swept into office, a triumph that stunned even the victors.

  A disbelieving Fremont Older and his wife Cora left the newspaper offices after receiving the election results, only to encounter a jeering mob organized by a vindictive Rolf. The mob followed the couple, hurling debris and insults, all the way to the Palace Hotel where the Olders maintained a suite.

  Now, even that pain seemed minor. That his crusade may have cost the life of the bravest police officer in San Francisco pushed Older's spirit to the breaking point.

  I sagged into the stiff-backed chair at my cluttered desk, unsure of anything. I let my head drift to the worn surface, too numb and enraged to weep.

  Out on San Francisco Bay, the mood was no less pained. The fog and churning sea had delayed the efforts of The Brotherhood by precious hours. Aboard the roiling deck of the steam launch Alcatrice, Hunter examined a nautical map as his cousin Francis struggled to steady the bulky Eveready on it.

  Hunter pointed to a spot on the map halfway between the Golden Gate and Alcatraz. "If dad went overboard on the San Francisco side of the rip, the ebb tide pulls him out through the Golden Gate. With a six, seven knot current he'd be halfway to the Farallon Islands unless he got lucky and drifted ashore at China Beach or Point Lobos."

  Though he was the newest member of The Brotherhood, Hunter was easily the finest sailor, having spent many childhood hours studying nautical maps and tide charts, carefully marking out the locations of the more than two hundred shipwrecks that had occurred around the treacherous bay.

  "China Beach, the rocks along there, that's about a man's only chance," Francis said, his normally calm tone now pained and raspy.

  A few feet behind them, Max was vomiting over the stern, brother Carlo lying across his ankles, holding him aboard in the chop.

  "Then we have to pray he made it over the rip to the flood tide," Hunter shouted as a bow beater soaked them, coating the deck an inch deep in water. "I say we hit Alcatraz, Angel Island, then through Raccoon Straits to Belvedere. If he's at China Beach or on the rocks, he'd probably be safe for awhile."

  Throughout, Christian said nothing. Only Max was more seasick than he.

  "All right," Francis said, "Hunter's right. I've seen it a dozen times on rescues with the Harbor Police. We hit the islands. Let's move."

  Patrick kissed his St. Christopher medal and mumbled a seaman's prayer. He looked over at his brother Francis, whose face reaffirmed his doubt.

  It would be a long, cold, painful night, with Max and Christian so ill from the turbulent waters that they were unable to come to blows.

  Chapter 15

  HIGH SIERRA

  APRIL 16, 1906. 12:25 A.M.

  Several hundred miles east, near moonlit Lake Tahoe, the Overland Limited of the Southern Pacific Railroad gasped and wheezed through its final ascent, up the treacherous eastern slope of the High Sierra. It was pulling four mail cars, twenty-three passenger compartments with four hundred and seventy-eight passengers, including Kaitlin Staley, the newly anointed "Belle of the Pullman."

  In a second-class coach halfway between the engine and caboose, Jeremy Darling watched as Kaitlin sketched her ideas for women's "elegant but inexpensive gowns." Most of the passengers were fast asleep, chortling a disparate melody of familiar snores as Jeremy rubbed his sandy eyes, feigning interest in Kaitlin's deft drawings. Fashion meant nothing to him. His true interest was Kaitlin.

  "You're sure you're only eighteen? You draw like someone who is—much older."

  Jeremy had been making inane comments since she boarded the train in Kansas City and chose him as the most harmless-looking man on board. She had been wearing, at the time of boarding, a tailored shirtwaist with hand-stitched gigot sleeves, lace collar, and bodice under a wasp-waist bolero jacket. The black bolero melded with a pleated ankle-length skirt that partially covered a pair of battered and misshapen leather high-low boots, the one item she had not been able to fashion for herself.

  She had plunked down next to Jeremy, pointed her high bosom and flashed her pale blue eyes and gleaming white teeth straight into his heart.

  "Kaitlin Staley. Some people call me Kate but my name is really Kaitlin. With a K. It was the doctor's mistake. Makes you wonder what kind of doctor can't even spell a kid's name. This seat isn't taken, is it?" Jeremy shook his head, speechless, as she squeezed in next to him. "I am going to San Francisco. I have never been there before. Have you?"

  "Jeremy Darling," he croaked. "I'm assistant professor of geology at the University of California. That's in Berkeley, which is just across San Francisco Bay."

  "Geology. How fascinating, Professor Darling."

  "Geology and seismology."

  "I'm somewhat of a size-mologist myself. I can just look at you and tell you're a hat size six and three-quarters."

  "Seismology. The subterranean movements of the earth's giant plates. That's what causes earthquakes. I study them. If one studies earthquakes, one ought to be in San Francisco or at least nearby."

  "Do they really have earthquakes in San Francisco?"

  "We had one two years ago this month. Two of them, actually. The last really big one was in '68."

  "Well, I'm not having any earthquakes while I'm there. Especially not any really big ones."

  "I'm just returning from England, from seeing a man named John Milne. He has built seismograph stations all over the world, so we can measure and record them when they strike. San Francisco is on an earthquake fault they call the San Andreas."

  "I'm going to San
Francisco to design clothes for the opera and the theater. Clothes that look very expensive but aren't, so women who don't have a lot of money can afford to go nice places."

  By the second day, Kaitlin was on her third outfit and fourth or fifth hat. Jeremy was in too much discomfort to keep track. His derriere had died outside of Denver. The entire westbound passenger contingent twitched and slithered, displaying the pained waddle dubbed "towing the iron caboose."

  Kaitlin scarcely noticed. To her, it had been the "Journey of a Thousand Moments," as she had read repeatedly, through the endless Plains and majestic Rockies, over Promontory Point, past the Great Salt Lake, winding through the Wasatch Range and across the broad Nevada desert into their final leg.

  Halfway up the eastern slope of the High Sierra, Jeremy excused himself and headed toward the toilet compartments, discreetly trying to massage life back into his wounded posterior.

  Antoine Dugay slid into the vacant seat. He had bribed the conductor with a Parisian Kiss from one of his three female cousins to glean that Kaitlin had boarded alone and was en route to San Francisco.

  "You are very beautiful girl," Antoine said, showing a little pink tongue and harelip camouflaged by a greasy mustache. "I can make you mow-nee in San Francisco, lots of mow-nee."

  "Oh, yeah, how is that?"

  "The melodeons, you can sing, maybe you dance, you tell some joke, some-sing like zat. Men give you mow-nee, lots of mow-nee."

  She knew little of melodeons but a lot about manure. "I don't sing, I don't dance, and they didn't make many jokes where I grew up."

  "My cousins, they make lots of mow-nee, they no sing, dance so good."

  She looked over at his cousins. One was a Jewish girl who sported a dented silver Star of David, a Polish accent, and flaming red hair. The second was an Indian with black circles under her eyes, and the third a waif-like blonde with the hundred-yard stare and slow nod of the opium chum.

  Kaitlin had observed the women leaving their seats with gamblers who had slid a coin into Antoine's pocket. Their activities had since been restricted to the baggage stalls, after travelers who actually used the sleeping compartments for sleeping complained about the moaning and banging at all hours of the night.

  "Your cousins, they look about as much alike as two stray dogs and a hickory stump."

  "What?"

  "Hickory stump, dogs, you know, little dogs? Rrr-uff, rrr-uff."

  Antoine thought she meant his girls were dogs; that dogs would not have them. "Antoine has no dogs. Antoine has fine bitches," he said, one watery eye twitching steadily.

  "Maybe you should slide back on over and join those fine bitches." Antoine's face showed a mild flush, his jaw clenching. Kaitlin noticed his hand slide into the pocket of his vest.

  She tensed. With her hands folded, she began to slide free the long, thick hat pin she had embedded in her left coat sleeve, a trick her father had taught her years before.

  "Excuse me," Jeremy interrupted. "I have been sitting in that seat since Chicago," and had the pickled posterior to match the upholstery indent to prove it.

  Antoine offered Kaitlin a final flash of the lazy pink tongue. "May-haybe we see each other some time again in San Francisco, ma cherie." He limped away.

  Within the hour, the train reached the summit of the High Sierra as Kaitlin dozed. The hacking snore of the apothecary's wife in the seat across the row awakened her. She listened to the rhythmic clacking of the steel wheels and gazed down the aisle.

  Four seats away, Antoine's eyes were staring at the ceiling, his thin moustache drawn about his oval, sucking mouth. Protruding from the bottom of the blanket on his lap were the soles of a woman's shoes. The blanket bobbed up and down near Antoine's lap, his pant legs bunched about his ankles. Antoine shivered and shook. In a final gasp, the air rushed past the uneven gold teeth, setting his bountiful nose hairs aflutter.

  The Indian cousin emerged from beneath the blanket, dabbing her lips with a handkerchief.

  Kaitlin, flushed and startled, suddenly understood what the men who had approached Antoine meant by the "Parisian Kiss." She turned to avoid Antoine's wink, staring out the window as the train entered Summit Tunnel, longest in the High Sierra.

  She braced herself as the rocking and swaying increased, the Overland clearing Donner Pass and suddenly making its heady descent toward Dutch Flat and Whiskey Ridge.

  They emerged from the tunnel; the moonlight illuminated a sign that read WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA-THE 31ST STATE, above an advertisement for men's hair tonic.

  Kaitlin pulled her diary from her bag and began to record the evening's events, unaware of how important her highly detailed observations would soon become. She entered a simple phrase.

  At least my father will never find me.

  Chapter 16

  LAWRENCE KANSAS

  APRIL 16, 1906. 5:20 A.M.

  Lincoln Staley, a lean and rugged forty-eight, arrived at the farm of Harvey Poggendorf, ten miles outside Lawrence, at sunrise. Harvey was surrounded by so much debris Lincoln might not have noticed him in the porch hammock were it not for the whiff of stale tobacco smoke.

  "Harvey, is Rusty home?"

  Harvey didn't get an answer out before Lincoln stomped to Rusty's bedroom, where he jerked the snoring nineteen-year-old behemoth from his filthy bed. Lincoln quickly frog-marched him out the front door and toward the barn while Harvey struggled to keep pace on his Union Army peg leg.

  "Pa, what's he doin' to me? Pa!"

  Once inside the barn, Lincoln manacled the bellowing Rusty, attached a bailing hook and hoisted his arms up until his toes barely touched the ground.

  Harvey was having a rough time trying to get his pipe relit.

  "Pa, he's crazy, Pa, what the hell's he doin'?" Rusty was six feet three, two hundred and forty pounds and dumb as mud. "Pa. Goddamn it, Pa!"

  "I got this new tobacco, Lincoln, might as well be tryin' to light a turd," Harvey said. He was not sure what Rusty had done, but whatever it was, he was sure he had done it.

  Lincoln found a broken rake handle and whacked Rusty hard across the rump.

  "Ahhh, ahhh, damn it, Pa, I ain't done nothin'. Tell him, Pa, I ain't done nothin'!"

  Lincoln showed Rusty the newspaper clipping he had found behind the doorframe in Kaitlin's room, and then remembered he could not read. Still, Rusty turned his face away when he saw the photo of Caruso.

  "Enrico Caruso and the Metropolitan Opera Company Travel to San Francisco. Cream of Blueblood Society to Attend. Any of this sound familiar to you, Rusty?"

  Lincoln had caught Kaitlin three weeks earlier on the banks of Lawrence Creek, showing Rusty her bare breast in exchange for a silver dollar.

  "If this is about Kaitlin, Sheriff, I don't know where she went. I swear to God," Rusty bawled.

  Even Harvey winced as Lincoln whacked his son across his ample backside.

  "Owwww . . . owwww . . . wooowwww," Rusty blubbered, tears and snot streaming down his cheeks and into his mouth.

  "Better tell the man what he wants to know, son. I think Lincoln's gonna last a lot longer than you are." Harvey pissed against a post, adding to the already foul smell. "Son, if he kills you I can't afford to hire no help. Now you tell the man what he wants to know, damn it."

  Lincoln prepared to hit him again.

  "I took her in the buggy," Rusty blurted. "She said if I didn't take her she'd never talk to me again. I bought her a ticket for San Francisco."

  Lincoln cut the rope and let Rusty collapse in a whimpering heap.

  Lincoln rode straight home. An hour later, he slid $200 in gold and silver coins into the pockets of his blue jeans, and then kissed Stella and their three sleeping sons good-bye.

  He rode south across the Kansas plains, stopping momentarily at the cemetery where one hundred sixty-four gravestones, including those of his father and grandfather, all bore the same date of passing. August 21, 1863.

  He rode the line of carefully tended graves, jarred by the memories, the sounds an
d sights flooding back to him. William Quantrill and Frank James shooting his father in the back, just steps from five-year old Lincoln's outstretched arms. The crack of gunshots. The smell of burnt powder. The agonized screams and pleas for mercy as bodies piled up and the dusty streets turned red with streams of blood.

  He turned and rode away, looking over his shoulder at his farm disappearing in the distance.

  Lincoln had raised Kaitlin like he had the boys, to be strong and fearless and independent. She had shown skill at riding, shooting, and even fighting that had surpassed her brothers. By the time she was twelve she was fast becoming a woman, one of such disarming beauty that men everywhere could little help but stare at her.

  He spurred his mount as a feeling of dread swept over him.

  He arrived in Kansas City as the sun bathed Union Station in sepia light. Lincoln handed a small photograph of Kaitlin, dressed in choir robe, to the ticket master.

  The tiny man perused the photo, his plastered hair smelling of chicken fat. "She a busty thing, kinda tall with a lotta teeth?" He held his hands out to indicate the size of Kaitlin's breasts. "Big old set of knockers on her?"

  Lincoln quashed an urge to reach through the cage and throttle him. A whistle sounded. "I asked you a question."

  "I seen her day 'fore yesterday, some farm boy, size of a mule, bought her a one-way to San Francisco."

  "Give me a round trip, second class, and make it snappy." Lincoln slid over twenty-eight dollars and sixty cents in gold eagles and silver coins, collected his ticket and slung his saddlebags over his shoulder.

  He made the middle of the train and leapt aboard.

  He drew his duster closed to cover the star and side arm and settled into a leather seat near the window, drawing the stares of fellow travelers. The train was barely outside the city limits when his thoughts drifted to his headstrong daughter alone in San Francisco.

  He pulled a journal and a fountain pen from inside his coat and began to write. It was a habit he had practiced almost daily since childhood, starting on the return train from Springfield, Illinois, where his widowed mother had taken him to observe the body of his namesake, the great Abraham Lincoln. A habit that Kaitlin had copied from her earliest childhood.